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"Your Help Is Hurting"

A view on how to truly help people, how philanthropy could best use its resources. It is another way of "teach a man to fish" instead of just "give the man a fish."

This is one illustration of the message the article attempts to convey:

But, yeah, there was one story where an individual after the genocide was starting to rebuild his community, and so he got some hens and started having an egg business, and he was growing that, rapidly expanding it. Then there was a church that decided to target his community as their area of philanthropy, and so as part of their charity they provided eggs for everyone as a source of protein. You don’t criticize that, right? That’s great that someone, a church, wanted to help. But what did that do to my friend and his business? Anyone who understands business knows that there’s no business model where you can compete with completely free or significantly subsidized goods, so, in his case, recognizing there wasn’t a market, he ended up selling his hens and getting out of the egg business. All of that is fine, the community was still having eggs, but people engaged in philanthropy oftentimes have short-term time horizons. Not surprisingly, eventually that church decided to focus its energy on another part of the world, and ended up getting out of that business. So the community ended up without the local provider, and without the charity. You look at that situation and ask, “Was the community really better off? Is that really the most effective way to help?”

G.Clinchy@gmail.com"Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none ever happened." -Libby Fudim

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Sounds like he should have hatched the eggs and sold chickens? Taken the eggs and made maynoise? I don't have a small business, but adapt, improvise and survive does seem to be the nature of business.

Ole and Sven are quietly sitting in a boat fishing, chewing and drinking beer when suddenly Sven says, 'I think I'm gonna divorce my wife - she ain't spoke to me in over 2 months.' Ole sips his beer and says, 'Better think it over...women like that are hard to find.'

Ole and Sven are quietly sitting in a boat fishing, chewing and drinking beer when suddenly Sven says, 'I think I'm gonna divorce my wife - she ain't spoke to me in over 2 months.' Ole sips his beer and says, 'Better think it over...women like that are hard to find.'